


The Thing With Feathers

by morethanthedark (Kayndred)



Series: 30 Days of Monster Grantaire [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: 30 Days of Monster Grantaire, Day 1 - Harpy, Magic, Medical Magic, Medical Mysteries, Pining, Wing Kink, Wingfic, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 04:06:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1102202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayndred/pseuds/morethanthedark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oh my god.”<br/>“Dude I know right.”</p>
<p>[Or - Grantaire calls Enjolras and is vague, Enjolras does not like Grantaire's apartment building, and no one really knows what's going on besides that it's weird.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thing With Feathers

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this sometime in April of this year, but since I'm moving my tumblr writings over to here, I figured I'd start at the very beginning of my Les Miserables fanfictions. Unbeta'd, a long while before any of the [In a House by the Sea series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/60922), back when my grasp on how I wanted to write people was shaky at best. Don't hurt me?

"No, I am not joking, this is -  _fucking God, what_  - this is serious! Can you get Joly or not, because if you can’t,” a crash, then, and a string of muffled cursing spills over the line, “I’ll call him myself.”

"Why did you call me first, anyway?" Enjolras asks, highlighting a handful of lines of text in his paper. Several hours worth of technical revisions lay behind him, as well as four cups of coffee and two muffins, but he’s a little unwilling to admit to Grantaire that the other man’s number coming up on his phone has been a welcome relief. 

"Because everyone’s sort of always at your apartment." Grantaire replies, apparently done breaking whatever he’d been running into in his own flat. 

It was true though, because everyone pretty much lived in Enjolras’ loft space, despite having their own places to sleep. He was almost positive that Courfeyrac and Jehan had set up some sort of secret living space on his balcony, if only because the plants and their cute little trellis tables had definitely not been there when he’d taken up renting the place.

“And you find out anyway, so it’s not even worth it trying to keep things from you.” There’s something in Grantaire’s tone that makes him think the other man is being sarcastic, but it’s so light and barely there that Enjolras doesn’t know what to do with it.

So he ignores it, for the time being.

“Find out what?”

There’s a huff of dry laughter over the line as he switches the phone from one shoulder to the other, writing the beginning of a counter argument in the space above a particularly  _wrong_  paragraph.

“If you can get Joly to get his ass over here, you’ll probably see it – them? – whatever; you’ll see too.” A note of bitterness enters his voice suddenly, and Enjolras is caught between  _where is our conversation going, what did I miss?_  and  _who do I have to kill for making you sound like that._  “Everyone will, I guess. This doesn’t feel like something that’s just going to go away.”

Confused and frustrated at the ridiculous vagueness coming from his friend, Enjolras stills in his chair and frowns at the corkboard that dominates the wall above his desk, hoping that Grantaire can tell how Absolutely Serious he’s being. “Grantaire what are you talking about? What do you mean? Are you even at home? What’s  _happened_?”

“Calm down, Apollo, I’m not dead or dying. Just grab Joly, and probably Combeferre because  _somebody_  has to not flip their shit besides me, and vamoose.” Is all he gets before the line clicks and he’s left in silence, frowning at his phone because  _what._

—

The phone makes a dull thump against the carpet when Grantaire tosses it away, so completely done with talking to people – even Enjolras, and at the same time especially Enjolras. He’d be lying if he’d said that he was done with his freak out, but he thinks that ‘entering a prolonged state of shock’ is a better descriptor for what he feels at the moment.

Which in all honesty is not a lot, but he’s not even slightly buzzed – so there’s a problem.

He’d like very much to enter the ‘I’m not thinking about it, ha ha ha!’ stage of denial – his favorite stage – but the throbbing, hot ache radiating from his shoulders and his arms and everywhere is far too distracting for something like compartmentalizing.

So instead he sits awkwardly in the middle of his living room, pillow pressed against his chest, and prays to all the deities he doesn’t care about that Joly will at least be willing enough to get him a goddamn ice-pack and a beer.

He’s nowhere near drunk enough for this.

—

Enjolras’ car – Patria version three, for the record, and no one talks about one or two, for  _reasons_  – is a minivan. After a series of mishaps that Shall Not Be Mentioned involving his first two cars and drivers who were not him (but were not also Grantaire, Cossette, Eponine, or Marius, it should be noted), he’d settled on a car that had enough room for not only all of their rally-protest-bake sale gear but also the people involved.

Hence, minivan.

It still seems a little weird to be toting around only two other people in it though, even though Combeferre volunteered to take shotgun just so Joly could sit in the back and go over his ‘Incase of Grantaire Specific Emergency’ medical equipment – which ranged from mild pain medication to sutures and what was probably the human equivalent of a horse tranquilizer – for the sixth time.

“You’re sure he didn’t say anything specific?” Joly asks as Enjolras takes the necessary thirty-degree right turn into Grantaire’s apartment building’s parking lot. There’s a sign on one of the covered spaces that reads ‘Active for –Vists only’, and Enjolras would bring the subject up with Grantaire about changing it if it hadn’t kept Montparnasse from parking his ridiculous death trap motorcycle there just to be a dick.

“I’m positive.” He says, triple-checking his mirrors as he pulls in and straightens out. “He just said to grab you and probably ‘Ferre and to head over to his flat. It sounded like he was breaking something though, so we’ll probably end up at that antique store on seventh looking for a coffee table.”

“I like that store.” Combeferre says, getting out and stretching. “The owner always has cookies, and I swear some of them are magic, I just haven’t been able to pick out which ones.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes and locks the van but doesn’t reply.

—

Grantaire’s apartment is a weird, three room construct on the top floor of a complex that looks like its weathered several zombie apocalypses and a paintball tournament. The outside is a sort of disheartening mottled grey-blue-green-red that has actually made Jehan stop in shock and actual horror on more than one occasion, and in general rouses a sense of confused sadness and mild hunger. The elevator is a clunky metal box that Joly stands in the middle of, because not only does it act like its bottom is about to drop out from beneath them, the walls shine dubiously in the sickly florescent glow from the three overhead lights that work.

Combeferre is the one to press the button for Grantaire’s floor, and he very pointedly does not wipe the strange sticky substance that clings to his finger against his pants. Grantaire has towels, he’ll wait.

The hall is an equally saddening affair; the carpet – possibly once a very pleasing blue – has been turned into a threadbare brown that makes Enjolras frown in distaste. He guesses that they’re just lucky that the holes it has are mostly near the elevator and not all the way down the hall.

Grantaire’s door is peeling and slate gray, but at least the handle is clean and the number is straight. There are several doors on his floor that are considerably worse.

Enjolras gives a perfunctory triple-knock before jiggling the handle, intent on utilizing Grantaire’s open door policy, only to have the door hold steadfastly before him.

“Has he not gotten out of his apartment yet?” Joly asks, eyes wide. Enjolras can practically see the gears in his head turning, trying to parse out what  _Grantaire hasn’t left and it’s basically ten in the morning_  might mean for his kit. “I know we made him promise to lock his door at night because of the neighborhood, but he’s  _always_  gone down to the corner store for Slurpees by now.”

“It’s a thing.” Combeferre concurs, whipping his phone out to call their wayward artist.

There are several moments of tense silence before they hear music start up in the apartment – what must be Grantaire’s ringtone for Combeferre, even though they can’t tell what it is. There’s another second of music before a loud  _Fuck!_  comes through the door, and the music stops.

“I can’t get up right now!” Grantaire calls, and it’s almost amusing to see how fast the color drains from Joly’s face, and that was a terrible thing to start off with, Enjolras is going to say so. “Just use the spare to get in, and come to the living room. And shut the door behind you!”

“This sounds bad.” Combeferre says, frowning at the door while he lifts up Grantaire’s welcome mat, the bold ‘Beat It, Hippie’ curling over to reveal an empty floor space. “Check the door molding.”

They spend the next two minutes poking around the door of Grantaire’s apartment, attempting to find the elusive ‘spare’ key they’d been directed to, when Grantaire’s voice rings out to them again, equally exasperated and amused.

“Break the doorknob, guys, c’mon! I’m losing my mind in here.”

“Oh no!” Enjolras calls sarcastically back, viciously wiggling the doorknob. “Whatever shall we do!”

“Where is your stupid spare?” Combeferre calls out, hip-checking Enjolras out of the way. Joly hisses something about ‘all the germs on that thing oh my god don’t  _touch it_ ’.

“In that one corner of the molding that looks like a sad kitten, we’ve been over this.” Is their answer, and their eyes are all dragged to the upper right hand corner of the door frame. Which does, indeed, look like the face of a sad kitten – although Enjolras has a sneaking suspicion that that’s because Grantaire did it himself rather than any normal weathering.

The kitten face pops off without any resistance, and there is indeed a spare key behind it, which they use to unlock the door after putting the kitten back.

The hall from the door goes straight toward a closet and then to the left into the bulk of the apartment, which is really just the living room-dining area-kitchenette all laid out in one long, division-less space.

Enjolras isn’t exactly paying attention to where they are going – Grantaire said the living room, and he’s been there often enough to know the path from the bathroom to the fridge in his sleep, so his only real excuse is that he wasn’t expecting to get blindsided by a giant dark mass of  _what even_  right as he enters the living room.

In this next moment several things happen at once.

Enjolras, having been accosted in the general vicinity of his face and shoulders by the black whatever, falls backwards and knocks into Combeferre, who’d been directly behind him and very calmly telling Joly not to freak out over the paint dust and to just pay attention to where they were walking. There’s exactly enough time for Enjolras to start with a loud, “ _What th_ -“ before they both tumble into the wall and go down in a heap.

At the same time this is happening, Grantaire, having been the one to accost Enjolras’ face – note, not the first time it’s happened, but never like this – lets out a startled screech and a, “My  _God_  man, make some  _noise_!”

And, to top it all off, Joly, poor worry wart that he is, is torn between helping Enjolras and Combeferre untangle themselves and finding out why there is a  _giant goddamn bird's wing_  in Grantaire’s apartment.

The wing is what draws Joly’s attention in the end, and only mostly because it’s moving around and shifting and hitting the wall and  _huge,_ what is happening even. He steps past his fallen friends, briefly caught by the way the light from the windows plays off the feathers, the way they fade from grey to the blackest ink at the tips.

“Oh so he  _did_  get you.” Grantaire says, breaking the spell, and Joly catches himself with his hand raised to pet or stroke or touch – but the bacteria on unclean avian wings! He leans forward, wary of the feathered appendage that had moved away from him to allow him further into the room.

Grantaire sits in the middle of his living room, a blue pillow pressed to his chest and his neck bent awkwardly to see over the arch of the wing closest to Joly, skin flushed looking but face pale.

“Good okay.” His mouth works for a moment, eyes drifting past the med student to Combeferre and Enjolras, who’d finally achieved upright positions. “So guys, hello. I have wings.” And if Grantaire’s voice doesn’t waver or crack it’s only because he’s been murmuring the same statement to himself for the past four hours and there’s really only so much a guy can take.

It just goes to hell in a hand basket after that.

—

They maneuver around Grantaire’s wing – wing! – and settle before him on the couch that isn’t blocked off to them by a wall of feathers. The opposite wing – the right hand wing? What’s the terminology for wings? – is folded up against Grantaire’s side, long primary feathers bending to accommodate the angle.

Enjolras is still trying to get over the shock of seeing wings attached to a person – fully functioning wings, too, if the way Grantaire flinches when Joly accidentally pulls too hard on a scapular feather is anything to go by.

It’s not just wings though, is the thing. The skin of Grantaire’s forearms has gone a strange dappled black, and when Joly goes to poke at him the skin is hard and slightly scaly, with over-pronounced calluses on his hands.

“Watch it.” He says, tucking his hands against his sides a moment before sighing and letting his arms flop loose again. “I sliced myself up a bunch this morning fumbling around. I’ve got talons.” His hands are held up, palms toward the ceiling like he’s praying. Enjolras can see the sharp tips of his nails from three feet away.

“Oh my god.” Joly says – for what is probably the sixteenth time, because  _oh my god_  – running his fingers over the sides of Grantaire’s arms, where, from elbow to shoulder, a thin spray of black feathers has sprouted.

“I know.” He replies, reaching on hand up to rub his knuckles through his hair, which, from where Enjolras is sitting, look an awful lot like ink colored version of the fancy, curly feathers on those weird pigeons he’s seen on the internet.

“Oh my  _god_.” He says again, pressing fingers into the flesh of Grantaire’s face. His eyes are still ice blue, but the iris seems wider, and his pupil dilates more actively as he tracks Joly’s hands. There’s a feral cast to his face, a way that the shadows fall that makes Enjolras think of bird beaks and the ethereal monsters out of the old story books.

“Dude I know right.” Combeferre chimes in from his place to Enjolras right, fingers flying over his phone. “Grantaire you have a pair of anatomically correct wings coming out of your back.” His eyes, when they move from the screen to Grantaire’s wings, are bright and curious. “I wonder if you can fly.”

The snort that bursts out of Grantaire is lost in the general shuffle that happens as his wings close around him and fluff up like an agitated cat.

“I’d really rather not try to find out, thanks.” His voice is muffled by the feathers, but Enjolras can see them shift and twitch close to his shoulders, the short marginal coverts settle back into a semblance of normal. “And I’m just… really hungry. Like – like the Testing Debacle of Junior Year.” He says, and Enjolras and Combeferre wince in sympathy while Joly carefully manhandles one of the wings away from Grantaire so he can get at the joints where the wings come out of Grantaire’s back.

The Testing Debacle of Junior Year had involved several days of constant coffee and studying, the end result being completed exams and Grantaire sleeping for almost four days straight. He’d woken up, eaten basically twice his weight in food, gone back to sleep for another half a day, and then woken up again only to catch a stomach bug and get a double ear infection.

He maintained that he’d never been so hungry, so not hungry, and in so much pain ever before. It was a conundrum for the ages.

Enjolras elects himself to get food.

“What do you want?” He stands, joints popping, and he thinks he catches a trace of envy in Grantaire’s eyes before he looks away.

“Something with a lot of meat. Or just meat. Lots of just meat.” Grantaire says, his wings twitching.

Combeferre laughs and reaches out to run his hand through Grantaire’s feather hair, and everything is oddly surreal while Joly is busy taking his temperature – four times – and pressing cold patches and ice packs on his sore joints. He eats the double meat sandwich Enjolras hands him with a total of four dick jokes, his wings reacting to his words with little shifts and fluffs that make them laugh. Enjolras kind of wants to touch them, but refrains. You don’t just reach out to touch your friends newly sprouted wings. There are rules.

Enjolras just has no idea what they are.  

It’s several hours later – during which Enjolras has blushed twice, threatened bodily harm three times, gotten coffee (and subsequently gone back for coffee for all of them), checked his email, and contacted the group six times about a meeting at the end of the week – before Joly proclaims Grantaire ‘as good as he’s going to get’.

“I mean, they really don’t cover this in any of my classes,” he says, running his hands through his hair. Grantaire picks idly at the carpet with toes that are now remarkably dexterous, eyebrow quirked. “But you look fine, despite the whole wings and feathers thing.” He very conveniently leaves out the skin and the claws and the feathers for hair and the nictitating membranes that had slid over Grantaire’s eyes when he’d heard a car alarm go off outside.

“Just eat a lot – and don’t drink! – and try to keep cool.” He pats one of the few featherless parts of Grantaire’s arms. “I’m going to go home and pretend this is all a terrible dream, but call me if anything changes anyway, alright.”

Grantaire smiles, lips closed, and shrugs. “I’ll do my best.” He stands with them and shuffles to allow them to leave. There’s a stiffness in his shoulders that Enjolras doesn’t understand, but he has no idea how Grantaire is feeling – maybe his body’s just unused to the weight of the wings.

He and Combeferre stand at the same time, but Combeferre leans down and wraps his arms around Grantaire’s shoulders, heedless of the feathers and the skin and the weird eyes. Grantaire goes very stiff and for a moment Enjolras thinks he’s going to bite him, but then both his arms and his wings come up in a big swoop of air, and Enjolras and Joly have to grab each other’s shoulders to keep from falling over.

Combeferre disengages a minute later, Grantaire’s wings parting around him like a dark cloud, and they both look a little less tired.

When Enjolras looks back at Grantaire as they’re leaving he seems terribly small despite the wings closing around him.

—

“You should stay with him.” Combeferre says as they stand waiting for the elevator. Joly is switching rapidly between his phone and Combeferre’s, pages open to bone growth and density and bird eating habits and all the things that Enjolras can’t think about because he’s pretty sure he’s still in shock.

“What.” Is his eloquent reply, eyes snapping up from where he’s been zoning out at the carpet. He’s seeing wings everywhere.

Combeferre sighs, the long, put upon one that Grantaire calls ‘Please Listen to Reason’ number four.

“Look, Grantaire has wings,”  _no shit_  and  _oh my god_  and  _how is that even possible I can’t_ , “and he can’t really leave the living room let alone the apartment, and I know for a fact that the food he has in his fridge is basically beer and pop tarts, and whatever lunchmeat is left over from that sandwich you made him.” Combeferre looks at him like he’s waiting for Enjolras to just get something from what he’s saying, but he’s really, really not.

“He needs someone with him.” He says bluntly, but his voice is soft and sad. “He perks up best when you’re there, and I know you don’t really see it but of the three of us he’d appreciate you staying the most.”

He can see Joly nodding in agreement as the elevator door slides open, and all Combeferre has to do is hold out his hand before Enjolras is dropping his car keys into his palm.

“Call us if something happens.” Joly says, looking up from the phones in his hands. The door closes on their looks of… well something. Enjolras isn’t exactly equipped to deal with thinking right now, he thinks – ha! – and instead turns right back around and walks to the door he’s just closed, eyes instantly swinging up to the cat’s head.

It’s eyes look skeptical. He knows the feeling.

The door clicks behind him when he closes it, nervous and stomach twisting around something he can’t name, when Grantaire calls out, “Enjolras?”

“Yeah.” He calls back, rounding into the living room.

Grantaire sits with his wings pulled against him, head pillowed on his arms, eyes tilted to catch Enjolras as he enters.

“You stayed.”

It sounds tired and sad, but amused too. Like he’s waiting for a joke that he knows won’t be particularly funny.

Enjolras hums in response, moving to sit on the couch again, sprawling, taking all the space because he can and Grantaire’s couch is born from haven itself. He sinks.

“How are you feeling?” He asks after a moment in which Grantaire takes too long to blink. When he does the thin secondary eyelid slides across his eyes too.

“Tired, I think.” His head rolls to the side, but his gaze doesn’t move, and it’s not weird because Grantaire’s been looking at him like that for a long time. “They aren’t as heavy as they look.” Something sly and warm lights up in his eyes. “Wanna touch ‘em?”

_Um, fuck yes._  Enjolras doesn’t say, but he can feel his lips curl up in a smile and, “Heck yes.”

Grantaire’s feathers are soft, a myriad of colors threading through them, from ink black to silver, white to a red so dark Enjolras can only see it in the light from the window. He runs his fingers down them, following the grain of them, listening to the way Grantaire’s breathing changes depending on where his hands are. He buries his fingers in the soft down at the base of them, where the wing joints meet his back, and he can feel the tiny feathers that spread out over his shoulder blades.

The other man stiffens, feathers frozen mid fluff, before melting against Enjolras, his nose pressed against the skin of Enjolras' neck.

“You are a wicked, wicked human being.” He murmurs, voice soft. His wings flare out, mantling slightly, before wrapping around Enjolras like a hug made of down.

“Whatever.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up on [tumblr](http://morethanthedark.tumblr.com/) sometime!


End file.
